Smart Black Soldier Fly Composting Enclosure with Environmental Monitoring and Control System

As cities grow, so does the complexity of managing the waste of their residents. Discarded food represents the largest fraction of wastes destined for landfill or incineration in the United States. Alternative approaches to managing and reducing the volume of food waste could yield important benefits such as extending the life of existing landfills, reducing tipping costs, and reducing environmental impacts from off-gassing and transportation of heavy wastes. Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens; Diptera: Stratiomyidae) larvae (BSFL) composting offers the ability to process a wide variety of food waste, thereby reducing the volume of the waste substantially. Advantages of BSFL over traditional composting methods include a more rapid waste processing cycle, a significantly smaller processing footprint, and low sensitivity to the incoming feedstock. The fattened larvae can be processed into animal feed, biodiesel, or biogas. Large BSF composting facilities exist for industrial waste streams, but there is great potential to use BSFL composting for small communities or neighborhood-scale waste processing if the processes can be optimized. This team has designed and built an insulated enclosure to hold a black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) composting system capable of processing 500 lbs of food waste per week. The enclosure is equipped to monitor energy use, waste processed and outputs produced, as well as environmental emissions and health and safety conditions (temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, ammonia). The system also controls the internal conditions as required to maintain the BSF colony and protect the health of researchers. Data collected is of research level quality, in compliance with the requirements of the EPA P3 grant.